


My Father is Mad

by Heavenlea6292



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Angrboda, Father-Daughter Relationship, Floki - Freeform, Floki as a father, angrboda's pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 04:34:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6551182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heavenlea6292/pseuds/Heavenlea6292
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My father is mad.<br/>I hear it wherever I go<br/>like the echo of a horn<br/>across the mountains. </p><p>(a poem from Angrboda's point of view, part of a writer challenge that I found and particularly liked.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Father is Mad

**Author's Note:**

> I know that my poetry style, specifically the repetition, is not for everyone. Just so y'all know I'm aware of that fact.

My father is mad.  
He holds my small face in his hands  
and his eyes look like they do when  
he leans over the fire  
telling stories of the gods.  
He shakes me  
I must understand  
I must listen  
it is what the gods want  
And he hears them in his head.

My father is mad.  
My mother told me  
when she thought  
I would never understand  
that once my father looked at me  
and said to her  
“she makes me too happy, Helga  
she is too pleasant, too good  
she makes me pleasant  
and I hate it.”

My father is mad.  
I dance around the carvings  
of my father’s gods singing  
the songs of their deeds  
as he mutters to himself  
and carves in a frenzy.  
My father turns to me  
and his eyes are red  
so I take his hand  
and ask for a story.

My father is mad.  
But there is no madness  
in his hands over mine,  
teaching me to feel  
the boat inside the tree.  
“This is a good one  
the gods have shown me.”  
He throws his arms around  
the tree and beckons me  
to do the same.

My father is mad.  
I hear it wherever I go  
like the echo of a horn  
across the mountains.  
I wonder what exactly  
mad is and what it means  
but I am afraid of that word  
and the look in my mother’s face  
when others warn her that madness  
never wanes, it only grows.

My father is mad.  
Sometimes, he carries me in  
his long arms and sometimes  
he holds my hand and sometimes  
he holds me tight  
but then he will get angry  
or scared and he will shove  
me away as I cry in confusion.  
I don’t understand what I’ve  
done to make him do that.

My father is mad.  
I trembled in fear as he  
picked up his axe and wrapped  
his hand around my mother’s neck.  
I watched hidden behind my father’s gods  
as he choked my mother. He finally let go  
and I heard her gasp and  
give him forgiveness .  
I finally understood why  
he told me she was too good.

My father is mad.  
When he leaves on his boats  
my father is smiling and  
my mother cries enough  
to fill the fjord.  
She thinks my father does  
not love her, does not love me,  
but she is wrong.  
He loves us in his way, the way  
the gods in his head say to.

My father is mad.  
He named me Angrboda  
She who offers sorrow.  
I asked my mother what  
sorrow is and she looked away  
from me, her hand over her mouth.  
“Sorrow, My child, is when  
the earth goes to sleep in the  
Coldest of winters. Sorrow is the  
ice in my heart when your father leaves.”

My father is mad.  
I play with the king’s children,  
the sons of my father’s friend  
and I fight with the middle one  
the one with the snake in his eye.  
He calls me a cheater and I  
push him to the ground.  
Then he calls my father mad,  
and I bloody his nose.  
I don’t care if he’s a prince.

My father is mad.  
I sit in front of the gods of  
my father and sing to them.  
He likes when I sing to the gods,  
when I sing for him, even if  
I don’t know what they all mean.  
I close my eyes and imagine  
his arms around me and  
touching my hair as he  
hums along in my ear.

My father is mad.  
He is chained to a post in the  
middle of town, in front of  
the great hall. The king sits  
and watches him, all day, wrapped  
in his furs as my father suffers in  
the cold, the wind, the wet in nothing  
but his tunic. I hate the king. I wish he  
would sail away and never return.

My father is mad.  
They say my mother helped him  
escape his bonds and run away  
in the night. The king has sent his sons  
to find my sly, clever father and I smile.  
They will never catch him.  
My father taught me that when we ask  
the gods for our deepest desire, we  
pay with blood. I cut my hand and smear  
it over Loki’s face, then down my own.

My father is mad.  
I am hungry, but there is little food.  
I am cold, and I cannot get warm.  
I wonder if this is how my father feels  
If he trembles and moans but  
never cries, because he is strong.  
But now I am too hot and my body  
feels like stone and I feel as if I cannot  
breathe and my mother cries into the night.  
I think I am dying, and I pray to the gods of my father.


End file.
